UPPER MERION — Realen Properties’ master plan for a multifaceted center in King of Prussia is back in full swing.

With residential construction imminent, those who may not necessarily be calling the Village at Valley Forge home will ultimately find it to be a premier destination for working, shopping, dining and, now, medical care.

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia will break ground by the end of summer for a Specialty Care Center on the roughly nine acres it now owns at the corner of North Gulph Road and South Goddard Boulevard.

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CHOP at the Village at Valley Forge, expected to be completed by December, 2014, will replace an existing location the hospital has leased on Mall Boulevard since 1997.

“The growth of the CHOP Care Network has been in direct response to increasing demand for our services in the suburban communities surrounding Philadelphia,” noted Amy Lambert, senior vice president of the CHOP Care Network.

In addition to offering all of the existing programs and specialties, the new center will feature an ambulatory surgery center providing outpatient general and specialty surgical services to children of all ages, similar to CHOP facilities in Bucks County, Exton and Voorhees, N.J.

“We anticipate that we will draw from a similar radius beyond Montgomery County as the current center does, but this will be a larger facility with more in-depth services, so that could draw from an even larger scope,” Lambert said.

CHOP at the Village at Valley Forge is part of the 158-year-old hospital’s nearly $2 billion spending strategy that includes a new ambulatory center in Central Jersey.

“This is one of the larger projects that is not at the main campus,” said Douglas Carney, CHOP’s senior vice president for real estate facilities. “In most cases we self-develop, and we’re doing that in this case.”

Carney indicated that a contractor had not yet been hired, but that the architectural job had been awarded to EwingCole, headquartered in Philadelphia.

“The purchase of this facility, from our view, is to bring health care as close to the patient’s home as we can and provide the most appropriate setting for their care,” Carney said, “and the more convenient it is, the better it is.”

Realen’s 132-acre site comfortably situated at the convergence of four major thoroughfares in King of Prussia has triumphed over numerous setbacks in the last several years.

If last year’s arrival of the legendarily popular Wegmans market was a shot in the arm for the budding metropolis its visionaries have in mind, the announcement of the CHOP deal is the tonic that should keep the Berwyn-based firm’s New Urbanism agenda humming along in tip-top form.

“This is the preeminent pediatric care facility in the country, if not the world,” said Realen CEO and President Dennis Maloomian. “From a compatibility perspective, anybody would want them here — the community wants them, we want them. The CHOP facility fits in nicely with our project because it involves more day visits. Moms bringing their children, could wander into our downtown after their visit, and shop or get something to eat at one of our restaurants.”

Ideally, CHOP’s presence will inspire both medical and non-medical offices to zero in on the Village at Valley Forge as a prime location, he added.

“We never stopped putting in the infrastructure, so the road improvements, storm water facilities, internal roads are all completed. Before (the economy) fell apart in 2008 we had a much more intense project, but we’ve now readjusted and we’re moving forward.”